Just the Thing

This updated edition of James Schuyler's letters to threedozen intimates, published on the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth, offers delicious insights into the vital lives, friendships, and sensibilities thatsprang from the influential New York School.On New York in the summertime: "Makes me think Thoreau wasright and Whitman was wrong."On conducting himself post-breakup: "I would like to do itwith as much silence and grace as a loose tongue and a trick knee permit."On his sister-in-law's antipathy toward the town beatnik:"His crimes against society seem to consist of long hair, tight pants and aHonda-I'm not sure which she minds most."Such effervescent and scathing takes on life, nature, love,and art are on joyous display in James Schuyler's letters to John Ashbery, RonPadgett, Barbara Guest, Alex Katz, Joe Brainard, Kenneth Koch, and many more.They paint an indelible picture of a charmingly self-deprecating gentleman witha deliciously wicked tongue. "Jimmy wrote letters for the most civilized ofreasons," a friend of his once said: "to inform and to entertain." And thatthey do, in inimitable style. Peppering his apercus with the occasional "toutde sweetie" and "pet noire," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Morning of the Poem holds forth on everything from Dante andDelacroix to travel and gardening to the delicate workings of his own poems and those of others. While his tone ranges from the lightlygraceful to the racily profane, each letter is exquisitely tuned to itsrecipient. And they have only grown more savory and valuable with time.